During almost forty years of history of the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in Niš, simulation was one of the most developed activities. Here the first (and probably the only) Yugoslav simulators were developed during the eighties. These are MOST-the time domain circuit simulator devoted to MOS electronic circuits, LIFT-the linear circuit simulator including frequency and time domain analysis, and LOST-the logic simulator. Any one of them was fully supported by an appropriate language. These were bases for education in both software development and simulation of electronic circuits.
In the nineties new developments happened and new contributions were given to the area making the new result world-wide important. Here collaboration with the University of Southampton, England, started giving a boost to the local ideas and efforts.
Among the results one should mention the development of Alecsis-The Analogue and Logic Electronic Circuit SImulation System, with its language named AleC++, the breakthrough in the symbolic circuit analysis and the introduction of artificial neural networks in electronic modelling. The areas of application of these results went far beyond electronics. Now, one may find successful simulations results in a variety of areas such as microelectromechanic, electromagnet, electrothermal and other “nonelectro” such as fuzzy logic, neural networks, computer networks, control systems etc.
One may say that a school of simulation was established mainly gathered within LEDA - the Laboratory of design automation at the faculty of Electronic Engineering.
Having all this in mind one can understand the need for establishing a formal group of researchers whose interest is mainly related to simulation. For the beginning these are from the electronic design community but, we hope, this will change soon. So, at November 11, 1998 the first meeting was held at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering in Niš where the Yugoslav Simulation Society was established. It was formally registered by the Serbian authorities at December 12, 1998. It will be referred to as YSS or, in Serbian, JDS. The list of participants and accordingly first members is as follows: Prof. V. Litovski, Prof. M. Popović, Prof. D. Milovanović, Prof. P. Petković, Prof. M. Damnjanović, Dr S. Milenković, Dr Ž. Mrčarica, D. Maksimović, T. Ilic, V. Panić, S. Janković, K. Zarković, and S. Djordjević.
Main goals of YSS are to gather researchers developing or using simulation tools from any research and development area, to help them express their views, to help them access to other’s research results and to try to establish international collaboration of Serbian and other simulation societies including the European Federation of Simulation Societies, The ETRAN Society, and the IEEE.
The headquarters of the YSS are at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Aleksandra Medvedeva 14 (Room 322), 18000 Niš, Yugoslavia.
YSS can be reached by phone at int. +381.18.529321 or int. +381.18.529335 by fax at int. +381.18.588447, and by email at contact@jds.elfak.ni.ac.rs.